Hunter Dollars Benefit Generations of Shooters

Hunter license dollars team up with National Rifle Association grant money to improve public shooting range near Choteau, Montana.

In June 2023, the Boone and Crockett Club’s Conservation Education Program received $35,000 in grants to improve and develop the infrastructure at the Palmer Shooting Sports Complex on the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Ranch in northwest Montana.

Starting in January 2023, Club staff began applying for grants through two potential funding mechanisms. Because the Palmer Shooting Sports Complex is open to the public, it qualified for funds from the Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks’ (FWP) Shooting Range Development Grant Program. This grant uses funds from hunting license sales that the state legislature appropriates to develop and improve public shooting range facilities. The Club’s conservation education staff also successfully applied for a National Rifle Association (NRA) Montana State Fund grant in March 2023. This was used as a 1:1 match with the FWP grant.

Safe Access

Accessibility and safety are two of any shooting range's most essential design elements. Until 2023, our range ran up against multiple minor yet glaring issues. Tripping hazards, uneven ground, ledges, and loose/soft gravel existed in multiple places on the range. The parking lot doubled as a cattle pasture, so visitors always had to watch out where they put their feet. We applied for funding that would allow us to improve these range conditions, allowing users to access their downrange targets safely and improving the overall shooting experience.

Gravel was needed to level off ground height in front of firing line.

Once we secured the funds from FWP and the NRA, we drafted plans, which turned out to be the easy part. Scheduling excavators in Montana is no small feat when the ground is frozen half of the year. This is even more complicated when the work site is 10 miles west of the middle of nowhere. We cut costs by shopping locally and sourcing materials like treated wood posts and angle iron for the new (and permanent) target backers. We scored another win when the dump trucks used material from a neighbor’s gravel pit five miles down the road.

Within a week, we had a level, expanded parking lot and a clean, compacted shooting line for archers. We redesigned the 100- and 300-yard berms and installed a new 200-yard berm. We filled the old pit in front of the 100-yard berm and graveled a gradual slope off the shooting line for safer and easier access to downrange targets.

We also installed posts for quick-install steel plates on chains with carabiners that attach to eye bolts at 500 and 1,000 yards for those who like to ring steel and test the upper limits of their equipment. The goal of these targets isn’t to encourage long-range shooting at animals. Instead, it’s designed as an educational exercise to humble even the most experienced shooter. These distances, especially in front of an audience, tend to take most shooters and help them understand that variables like wind will wreak havoc on everything they know about ballistics and bullet performance.

A Modest Beginning

Initially developed in 2002, the Palmer Range consisted of a classroom that doubled as a storage building, a small wooden outhouse, and dirt berms at 100- and 300-yard distances. The range was built in an area known as the Hightower pasture, named after the Hightower family who homesteaded there. Remnants of their old barn still exist near the range today.

In its early days, the range merely consisted of a large concrete pad for five benchrest stations, a steel sunshade tarp system, and eight sporting clay machines on trailers. Once up and running, the range hosted groups ranging from Montana FWP Hunter Education courses and game warden live fire exercises to Outdoor Life’s annual guns and optics tests and other conservation education activities.

In 2018, the range saw a significant uptick in user groups. And thanks to numerous donations and grants, we purchased more shooting sports equipment and materials, which meant we needed more space and storage. That year, we received a grant from Montana FWP’s Shooting Range Development Grant Program for $10,800, which the Club matched. With just over $20,000, we installed a modern, ADA-accessible concrete cast vault toilet and a 40-foot weather- and rodent-proof cargo storage container. These funds also helped reinforce the dirt terminal impact berms eroding from the hurricane-force winds that the Rocky Mountain Front receives much of the year.

Shooter Heaven

Today, the complex has several features for both precision shooters and archery enthusiasts. At 300, 500, or 1,000 yards, we hang square steel plates ranging from 20 to 4 inches to test a shooter's aim, breath control, and trigger squeeze.

LEFT: Example of a mobile target stand currently in use. RIGHT:Currently rocks hold up the steel target structure. Often, they are blown over by wind, a serious safety concern to anyone standing nearby. All of the buildings associated with the shooting range are and will remain gray. No sound mitigation measures are in place other than proper hearing protection provided on site. We recommend the use of suppressors for those who legally possess one. Eye protection is also provided on-site.

Our Know Your Limits (KYL) rack features round steel plates of 12, 10, 8, 6, and 4 inches. We use a tractor to pick up this rack and reposition it at any distance. On this course, shooters move from left to right or from large to small targets after each impact until they miss. Much like a precision rifle match, we can add variables requiring shooters to reposition after each shot. Shooters must build comfortable and stable shooting positions from features like boulders and fence rails, and they have to shoot prone with bipods in tall grass. The goal is to mimic real-life field conditions in a safe and controlled manner, enabling all shooters to further develop their skills, from the fundamentals to the most advanced.

For those who enjoy archery, a new fixed-distance range accommodates field target bags from 10 to 50 yards. This range is perfect for archers to fine-tune their technique and confirm their sights or for traditional archers to perfect instinctive distance judging. It’s a great complement (and competition opportunity) to our 3D big game archery range during the Club’s summertime Outdoor Adventure Camps.

The Palmer Shooting Sports Complex is available for public use, and those interested should call the Rasmuson Wildlife Conservation Center at 406-472-3311 for more details.